The wind had changed.
Not in temperature, but in tone—like the forest itself was holding its breath. A quiet weight pressed down on everything. Branches didn't creak. Leaves didn't rustle. Even the birds had fallen silent.
Kael noticed it first.
They had been traveling north for three days, following a frozen stream that carved a jagged line through the heart of the woods. With Aria barely recovering and the others worn thin, the silence was more unnerving than restful.
Lyra walked beside him, her hand never far from her blade.
"There's something wrong with the ice," she said, slowing her steps.
Kael crouched at the bank and studied it.
The surface was smooth—too smooth.
And beneath it, shapes moved. Slowly. Like shadows that didn't belong.
Kael's fingers brushed the edge. It wasn't cold.
That's when the first whisper came.
Not a voice.
Not words.
Just a pulse. A memory, not his own.
He recoiled.
Aria gasped behind them. "You felt it too…"
She stood, one hand wrapped around the hilt of her short blade. Her skin was pale, but her eyes burned.
"They're watching," she said. "From below."
They set camp on a ridge away from the stream, building no fire, speaking little. That night, Kael dreamed.
He stood alone on the ice.
It cracked beneath his feet, but didn't break.
Below, faces stared up at him—grey, bloated, their eyes like pits of ink. Dozens of them. Maybe more. A mass of souls long drowned.
One reached up.
Kael couldn't move. Couldn't speak.
The hand pressed against the ice. A single eye blinked—slow, deliberate.
Then a voice, distant but sharp as glass:"Return what was taken."
Kael jolted awake, heart hammering.
Across from him, Aria sat wide-eyed, trembling. "I heard it too."
Lyra knelt beside them, sword drawn. "Heard what?"
Kael looked down at his hand. A thin frost traced his fingertips.
"They're calling something back," Aria whispered. "And we're too close."
At sunrise, they continued north—but slower now. The frozen stream followed them, curving unnaturally through the terrain. They stopped once to let the horses drink, but the animals refused to go near the water.
It wasn't water anymore.
It was a mirror. A warning.
Lyra spotted the sigil first—etched into the trunk of a dying birch tree.
Three slashes. One ring.
Kael touched it.
His vision blurred.
He saw towers, half-sunk beneath ice. Warriors in blackened armor locked in battle with beasts that moved like smoke. A gate. A door of bone, sealed with flame—and a boy with no name holding the key.
And in the distance, the Watchers.
Still. Waiting.
He pulled his hand back with a gasp.
"They know we're coming."